


Deus Ex Machina

by jaegermighty



Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aliens, F/M, Post Avengers (Movie), Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/pseuds/jaegermighty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Maybe you should’ve picked a less creepy animal to get superpowers from,</i> Gwen texts him. <i>They’d like you more, y/y?</i></p><p><i>The radioactive bunny rabbit room was locked,</i> Peter sends back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note the tag for WIP - I've been working on this for a long time, practically since these two films came out, so I decided to start posting just to try to keep myself moving forward on it. No cliffhangers, though! I think. No promises.

In a stroke of fate more unlucky than usual, Peter Parker is out of town when the aliens invade.

Out of town like _really_ out of town, as in Harrisburg, Illinois, a small town that contains two Mexican restaurants, a Kroger, a barbeque stand, May Parker’s older sister Jan Reilly, and not much else. For city-born and bred Peter, it was hard. For a grounded Spider-Man during New York’s greatest crisis pretty much _ever_ , it was a straight up nightmare.

News trickled in slowly; most of the city’s infrastructure had been destroyed or suspended temporarily. Because the wormhole had disrupted most satellite systems, there was virtually no live coverage of the actual attack other than grainy footage taken from far-away helicopters and shaky phone interviews with reporters still gridlocked inside the city. It was at least two days until they had any reliable information at all, and another three after that before any mention of the Avengers surfaced. 

It took Peter five frantic days to get ahold of Gwen, and even longer to track down Flash, who’d been at a gym in lower Manhattan and had suffered a concussion when the ceiling collapsed beneath the weight of a crashing alien hive ship. Liz Allan, one of Gwen’s friends, had been found near death on 86th and was currently in a medically-induced coma and two of their other classmates – a guy named Rob on the basketball team and their student council vice-president, Shenae Lewis, had both been killed. Had Midtown been in session that day, it would’ve been worse – much worse. 

At one point, Peter thought, _maybe it’s good that I don’t know that many people,_ and instantly hated himself for it. Estimated six thousand fatalities, with numbers still rising, twice the amount of September 11 and the biggest loss of civilian life in U.S. history. Six thousand people, with lives and personalities and people who loved them. Six _thousand._

Cell service was down for almost two weeks so Peter spoke with Gwen over email, mostly, though that was still unreliable at best. She sent him pictures she’d uploaded from her cell phone of broken, crumbling buildings, twisted scraps of unfamiliar machinery sitting abandoned in the streets, police barricades that wound around huge sections of street that were just _missing –_ like part of the concrete had simply…melted away. 

Peter took all of this in with numb horror and an angry sort of possessive resentment that all came down to the fact that he hadn’t been there, that instead of defending _his_ _city_ from an honest-to-God _alien invasion,_ he’d been cooking poached eggs in his Aunt Jan’s cramped kitchenette, blissfully unaware that a) aliens were real, and b) pretty pissed off at Earth, apparently. 

He _ached_ to go home, like he ached to know what happened to his parents, to find his uncle’s murderer, to see the worry lines around Aunt May’s eyes disappear. He felt literally, physically sick, stuck in the middle of nowhere, Midwest, useless and impotent and exasperated. He picked fights with his aunts, roamed the empty streets on his skateboard, looked for crime to fight. He didn’t find any. 

(No tall buildings to swing from, no police scanner to tune into – Spider-Man cruising around in a ’92 Chevy Lumina while his city was collapsing, thousands of miles away. It was almost funny, in a really, really awful way.)

“Thank God, thank God we weren’t there,” Aunt May kept saying, until Peter thought he might actually explode from frustration, because six thousand people _had_ been there, _Gwen_ had been there. He snapped at her once, finally, and she drew herself up, spine hardening into steel and said crisply, “don’t you dare make me feel guilty for wanting you to be safe,” and Peter had to retreat, so unbelievably not ready to have that conversation, and knowing neither of them were ready to say the actual words out loud yet. 

Going home, when it finally happens, is a surreal tour through the United States military’s idea of crisis management, which includes about a gazillion security checkpoints and lots of unnecessary paranoia that Peter imagines Gwen would have a lot to say about. And sure enough, when she meets them at the airport her mouth is pressed into an unhappy, crooked line across her face, with that look she gets when she wants to be angry but is trying not to be. Peter is sadly very familiar with that look. 

“Hey,” she says, weary and relieved and frustrated and sad, and Peter thinks, _oh, oh this girl,_ and hugs her. 

“Hey,” he says back, into the golden angle of her hair, and she pushes her body into his, like she trusts him to push back. And he does. “Are you okay?”

Gwen shrugs a little, pulling back to give him a look like, _are you kidding._ “Your aunt looks about two seconds away from a safe sex talk,” she whispers, and takes a step back.

Peter thinks Aunt May looks more like half a second away from pulling out her cell phone camera, but whatever. “How’s…everybody?”

“Flash is better. Liz is the same.” Gwen smiles at Aunt May, leaning in to give her a quick hug, her mouth softening at the corners. “I’m glad you guys are safe - Mrs. Parker, it’s so good to see you.”

“Aunt May, Gwen, _Aunt May_ ,” she replies. “You’re the one that was in the middle of it sweetheart, we were worried sick. I don’t think Peter slept at all before he knew you were safe.”

Peter feels like he should blush, but in all honesty is far past the point of being embarrassed by the depths of his own fierceness when it comes to the people he loves. Gwen doesn’t seem fazed by it anyway, just reaches out and clasps his forearm, right above the wrist, like she just wants to know that he’s there. 

“Oh, we were okay. It didn’t come close to us at all,” she says, which is so obviously a lie. Both Aunt May and Peter let it go. 

Gwen drives them back to their house in her mom’s car, on eerily empty streets. The subway is still down, she explains, and so many businesses are still closed that traffic is kind of a non-existent thing outside of Manhattan, at the moment. Peter watches through the back seat window as they pass lines and lines of empty cabs, sitting idling on the sides of the roads, silently waiting for the city to wake back up again. 

“But where did they come from?” Aunt May asks, sounding bewildered and, Peter realizes painfully, frail. “Why did they _do this_?”

“I don’t know,” Gwen says, subdued. Peter looks up to the front seat and sees her reach out for his aunt’s hand. “I don’t know.”

Their neighborhood is fine, if a little ragged-looking around the edges; it’s far out of reach of Ground Zero. There’s no food in the fridge that hasn’t spoiled, so Aunt May makes them corned beef hash and green beans from a can. They drink lukewarm cans of V8 from the cupboards, because there’s still a boil order on the tap water. 

After Aunt May falls asleep Peter puts on his costume and takes Gwen swinging, half because he’s missed doing this with her and half because he has a desperate, itching urge to look at the damage, to see everything that he missed. Gwen doesn’t say anything but she yells directions in his ear, directing him to the places that were the most badly hit. 

They land on a damaged skyscraper near Stark Tower, most of its windows shattered and large scorch marks slashed across the concrete. This, Gwen tells him, is where the bulk of it happened, where the wormhole was, where the Avengers were fighting. Peter rips off his mask and just _looks_ , winded in a way that’s more than just physical. 

“I should’ve been here,” he says, to Gwen, or to the city, maybe. “I should’ve – _damn it_.”

Gwen comes right up behind him, standing with her arms crossed and her chin against the back of his shoulder. “Yeah, maybe,” she says.

Peter doesn’t quite know what to make of that. “Not gonna say it isn’t my fault?”

“Is that what you want me to say?”

Peter huffs out something that sounds like a laugh, but really isn’t. “No.”

“Well.” Gwen shrugs. “I think I’d like to hear how you justify taking credit for an _alien_ attack that happened while you were in Illinois, of all places.”

Peter really does laugh at that, because honestly, _Illinois._ “I have really, really bad karma?”

“No, you don’t.” Gwen gives his arm a friendly punch, spinning around neatly in her boots and leaning her back up against the lip of the building. 

“I don’t believe in karma, anyway,” Peter tells her.

“Oh, good,” she replies, casting her gaze toward the angled shadow of Stark Tower, the faint glow of its windows. 

Peter watches her profile and thinks about blood and ash and what kind of power it would take to rip holes in the pavement and take down entire buildings in one shot. _This world is terrifying_ , he thinks, not for the first time. 

“They’re worried about brain damage,” Gwen says, a little out of nowhere. She clears her throat, reaching a gloved hand up to press above her upper lip, like she’s trying to hold the words in. “With Liz, I mean, not with me. I mean, maybe with me, that’s always a possibility, especially considering this last month – I mean, wouldn’t brain damage be more logical than _aliens?_ For serious.”

“Definitely more logical than mutant spider powers,” Peter agrees.

“I just.” Gwen shakes her head in a short movement. “It’s not like we were _that_ close. We weren’t close, actually, at all, although when something like this happens you always kind of inflate how well you knew them in your head, you know, so it’s more about you than it really is. We had a couple classes together, we’d study for tests and stuff, but she was kind of an irritating person when it comes down to it and I always avoided her calls on weekends because she’d drunk dial everyone in her phone – “ Gwen’s voice breaks and she scowls, as if she’s angry with herself for getting emotional. “God. It just doesn’t make sense. She was a nice girl.” 

“She still is,” Peter reminds her gently. 

Gwen closes her eyes and reaches out with her hands. He steps forward and takes them without even thinking about it, a natural instinct to go _forward_ and _closer_ that his body performs without much input from his brain at all. 

“I’m a horrible person,” she says, into his chest. 

“No, you’re not,” Peter scoffs.

“Horrible,” Gwen insists. “Talk too much. Awful. Sarcastic and mean spirited. Full of myself. I watch _The Vampire Diaries._ ”

“Whatever,” Peter replies. “ _The Vampire Diaries_ is underrated.”

Gwen bursts out laughing. “Shut up, shut up,” she tells him, “you do not.”

“I really do,” Peter says, and “true facts, Caroline’s my favorite,” and Gwen replies, “ _shut up_ , she’s my favorite too,” and then they’re both laughing because the world is terrifying _and_ ridiculous, sometimes, and most of the time that’s funny. 

Except then Gwen starts to cry, which is less ridiculous, and definitely not funny at all. 

“Jesus Christ, Peter,” she says. “Jesus _Christ._ ”

Peter just reaches out and holds onto her, because what else can he do, and they crumple to the ground in a heap, all knees and scraped elbows and too-pointy chins. Gwen just goes boneless, burying her face in his arm and squeezing his neck with all of her strength. She cries like Aunt May cries – silently, without a lot of drama, but with her whole body involved, muscles tight and tense with misery. 

“I was so scared,” she says fiercely, angrily. When she finally pulls away her face is bright red and there’s a webbed imprint from his costume on her cheek. “I was so scared, that’s all I could think about. I didn’t even think about my family, or you, all I could think was how much I didn’t want to die.”

Peter reaches out and frames her face in his gloved hands, watches her eyes fall closed, feeling the weight of her head in his palms. 

“That’s all I could think about too,” he tells her honestly, listening to his voice break. Doesn’t say, _I don’t know what I would’ve done_ or _I love you, I love you_ or _I never would’ve forgiven myself._

Gwen doesn’t say anything back, just sits there, and breathes, and lets Peter hold her head up, and cries. 

 

Things Peter knows: Gwen was in Manhattan during the attack, on her way to an interview for an internship at Worthington Industries for next semester. She was, more specifically, at the 8th Street/NYU subway station, waiting for the train when the wormhole opened. One of the first alien ships taken out by Iron Man crashed into the 59th Street power plant, which knocked out most of the subways, including Gwen’s. For most of the attack she was trapped in a subway car beneath the city’s surface, somewhat safe but also somewhat not, unable to do anything but listen and wonder and hope. 

She was down there for five hours ( _five hours,_ Peter keeps thinking, _three hundred minutes, eighteen thousand seconds)_ until NYFD got to them, opening the access hatches and getting everyone out one by one. She had mild smoke inhalation from the remnants of explosions that made their way down to her from the street level, and a laceration on her right leg from when the subway car stopped abruptly and she fell against a jagged, exposed edge of a seat. There were three fights on her subway car between the anxious, panicking people, and Gwen was the one to break them up, keeping the more agitated ones separate and defusing problems before they had a chance to begin. She met a single mother named Divya who was down there with her, and Gwen’s had coffee with her twice since the attack, has met her son and listened to her talk about her nightmares. 

The first number she dialed when she got to a phone was her dad’s, before she remembered. Then it took her a full five minutes to remember what her mom’s cell even was. 

Things Peter doesn’t know: what she was thinking during those five hours, if any thoughts were of him, if she’d been expecting against all odds for him to come get her out. If she’d been hoping for her father, instead, maybe, or if she even thought she’d get out at all. If she’s been having nightmares too. 

(If she does, she won’t admit it, Peter decides, and he won’t push her on this, doesn’t have the right to. Maybe if things were different, if they were a different sort of couple, he would, but in the real world, which is scary and complicated and bizarre and contains aliens all of a sudden, all she needs is for him to be present, and to hold her sometimes, and to take her flying through their city until she forgets what she’s sad or angry about. And in this real world, those things are the very absolute least of everything that Peter Parker is willing to do for Gwen Stacy.)

 

First official week of summer, Spider-Man stops six men from robbing the Deutsche Bank headquarters on Wall Street. 

They’re obviously a part of some sort of organized syndicate judging from how they’re dressed and the way they talk to each other. Peter’s gotten good at sorting out the classes of criminals he deals with, mostly from Gwen’s influence, but also from the ghost of Captain Stacy’s. At night he’ll read case files ganked from One PP, handwritten in the same loose scribble that Gwen writes in. Wikipedia is helpful too, especially to keep track of the complex web of families and clubs and freaking _doomsday cults_ or what the hell ever – Wilson Fisk, Luchino Nefaria, Whitney Frost, blah blah blah. _Walking, talking egos_ , Peter thinks. Not that he has much room to talk, considering he has his own line of action figures now, but still.

Anyway. Peter’s trying to help, not hinder, is what he’s getting at. Otherwise, what’s the point?

They have six hostages pinned down behind the counter. Two men on them, two more by the doors, and two by the vault, trying to use some kind of strange-looking tech to open the locks. They obviously don’t know how to use it, but they are trying very genuinely, and Peter being the generous type, lets them have at it for a couple minutes after he’s taken care of the other four, out in the main lobby. 

“I think you’re actually missing the engaging mechanism,” he says helpfully, and both of them whirl around and shoot at him. “Whoa! Very hostile,” he gripes, and drops from the ceiling on top of the big one’s head. 

“The _fuck,_ ” the other one says, and aims his pistol at Peter’s head. Peter webs it away and kicks him in the face, which is more of a reflex than any deliberate action. 

“Well, that was rude,” Peter comments, and deflects the way-obvious blow aimed at his solar plexus. “Do they not teach you how not to telegraph your attacks at thug school? Disappointed.” The one whose head Peter is currently standing on twitches violently, and Peter leaps to the wall, all the better vantage point to web the crap out of them from. 

Sometimes he thinks he’s getting the hang of it, the fighting crime thing. Like with things like this, where it’s easy to predict the best way to diffuse the situation so that nobody gets hurt. A lot of it is common sense – like, rescue the hostages first, then get the guys in the back, et cetera – but some of it is instinct, like how Peter can just tell when something big is going down somewhere that he needs to be, or how he can’t help but reach out and catch somebody who’s about to fall. Like it’s not even his decision, like it’s just a natural function of his body. 

The police outside are calling his name now instead so Peter leaves Dumb and Dumber hanging from the ceiling and books it. On impulse, he grabs the tech they’d been using too (because Peter’s a scientist, because Gwen’s a scientist, because otherwise it will end up gathering dust at the One PP evidence locker, because finders keepers, because whatever, it looked interesting).

Aunt May almost catches him climbing in through his bedroom window but gets annoyed with him anyway because she is, quite possibly, psychic.

“You could use the front door, you know,” she says, lobbing a box of band-aids and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at his head. Peter catches them both and her eyes widen slightly. 

“Sorry, Aunt May,” he says, going for apologetic, sheepish, and _no of course I wasn’t out fighting crime, what are you talking about._

She opens her mouth, then closes it again. “Dinner in about an hour,” is what she finally says, walking away hesitantly, still looking back over her shoulder. Peter sighs, guilty and frustrated and feeling more than a little ridiculous. 

The tech is obviously a bomb of some sort, probably alien in origin. It’s simply designed, and not unlike a regular bomb, and it’s missing whatever it is that aliens use for an explosive charge, quite obviously. The trigger is also missing, so Peter doesn’t feel all too bad about bringing it home.

“You get all the good toys,” Gwen complains over Skype, “hold it up to the webcam, dork, I can’t see it.”

Peter lifts the cookie sheet with the dismantled parts obediently. “You can have it if you want. Like a – a three month anniversary present.”

“We’ve been dating for four months,” Gwen says absently. “What are those markings on the casing? Is it some kind of script?”

Peter peers at it. “Must be. I don’t recognize it and it’s definitely not any human language.”

Gwen’s frowning, her image on the screen stuttering as she fumbles with stacks of papers and books on her desk. “It looks so familiar,” she says. “Maybe – here.” She digs out a notebook with the Transformers logo on the front and flips through it, brow furrowed.

Peter grins stupidly. “Transformers,” he says to himself.

Gwen smiles a little sheepishly, holding up a page to the webcam. “I know. Anyway. Look at this!” she says triumphantly. Peter frowns; on the pages are handwritten symbols that look similar to the ones on the device. “You remember that other bank robbery last week, the one in Brooklyn with the weird gun?” She peeks over the top of the notebook, eyes wide. “This writing was on it. I copied it down from a crime scene photo I saw at the station.”

“It must be tech that was leftover from the attack,” Peter reasons. “What happened to the gun? It was in NYPD custody, right?”

Gwen tosses the notebook aside and shrugs. “Some dude in an ugly suit came by and took it,” she says. “I didn’t talk to him, but Ramirez did – you know, my dad’s old partner? – he told me that he identified himself as S.H.I.E.L.D., whatever that means.”

“Shield,” Peter repeats. “Whose shield?”

“Beats me,” Gwen says. “It must be some government branch, who else would have the authority to seize that kind of evidence from NYPD?” She frowns. “Evidence connected to the Manhattan Invasion, especially.”

Peter sighs heavily. “We’re really lucky this thing is broken, I think it was probably a bomb.” Gwen’s mouth drops open. “Probably the same kind that blew up the Allied building and the public library.”

Gwen looks at him gravely. “There’s probably more of this stuff out there,” she says. 

Peter nods grimly. “Not for long,” he says. 

 

In the end Gwen convinces him to drop off the remnants of the bomb at the R&D department at Stark Industries, which according to her is the best place for it in terms of its potential benefits to science. He drops down through a skylight – seriously, skylights? – and leaves it on a lab table with a note that says, ‘from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,’ just to be a jerk. Because he can. 

In the _Times_ the next morning there’s a statement from the SI CEO, a woman named Pepper Potts, thanking him for his generous donation. In the _Daily Bugle,_ Jonah Jameson accuses him of being an alien terrorist. 

_Maybe you should’ve picked a less creepy animal to get superpowers from,_ Gwen texts him. _They’d like you more, y/y?_

Peter snorts. _The radioactive bunny rabbit room was locked,_ he sends back. 

 

“Dude,” Flash says, “what happened to your face?”

 _A pissed off burglar dressed up like a cat tried to sharpen her claws on it,_ Peter thinks. 

“I fell,” he says, and shrugs.

“You look worse than I do,” Flash says, shaking his head. “Fuckin’ skateboards, man.”

Peter shakes his head, leaning against a Spider-Man poster hanging on the wall next to Flash’s bedroom door. This is one of the more surreal experiences of his life, including the time he fought a giant lizard. But then again, aliens attacked last month, so maybe this isn’t so bad. “How are you feeling, Flash?”

“Eh.” Flash shrugs and twirls a football up in the air lazily, catching it with one hand. There are fading bruises on his temple, curls of purple and yellow that spiral outwards from his eye down his cheekbone. “Got hit in the head by a huge piece of concrete.” He stretches his hands out in order to demonstrate how epically huge this piece of concrete was. “Slept through most of the fun stuff.”

Peter wants to ask which parts of the Invasion count as ‘fun stuff’ but he refrains. “Well you’re alive, that’s what counts.”

Flash gets a weird look on his face, almost pointed, and Peter braces himself inwardly, wondering if this is the moment when Flash’s weird camaraderie ends and the scorn and punching returns. 

“Yeah,” is all he says though, and then, “you wanna play Halo?”

Peter considers. “Oh. Sure, yeah.”

They’re like…bros or something, Peter realizes, an hour into Halo 3. He’s never actually had a bro before. He wonders if he’s doing it right. 

“Goddamn!” Flash yells, as his character explodes into tiny, bloody mega pixels on the screen. “That’s how you do _that,_ Parker!”

Peter forces himself not to dodge out of the way of Flash’s enthusiastic shoulder clap. Maybe he’s doing okay.


	2. Chapter 2

New York is a different kind of place, now.

The outpouring of emotion and turmoil after the attack was natural, especially with how much worse it could have been and the world-shaking revelations that came along with it – aliens are real, so are Norse gods, neither of them seem to like humans much, et cetera. But New York itself, being the epicenter of all this, becomes all at once the safest and the most dangerous place in the world, what with the influx of police and military and various government agencies responding to the extreme spike in crime and rioting. You can run into eight different cops on one street and get mugged a block over, is what ends up happening.

Manhattan is still a disaster area. Businesses are just now starting to open back up, and even now it's only things like restaurants and grocery stores, nothing non-essential. NYU has officially announced its plan to close down its nearly demolished campus and rebuild a brand new one. The subway system is estimated to be shut down on the island until next year, at least. Most everyone who lives there whose home wasn't destroyed has been evacuated to shelters or temporary housing, and there are still who-knows-how-many unrecovered bodies in the some of the bigger areas of wreckage.

It's a different kind of disaster, on a whole different kind of scale, one that they weren't even remotely prepared to deal with. Not just the loss of human life, but the physical and economic damage is something that nobody knows how to handle or how to even _approach_. The costs of the damage are estimated to be around 160 billion dollars, roughly, more than any other kind of tragedy ever, and the government is largely occupied with squabbling over who's going to foot the bulk of that bill. Insurance? Do aliens count as an Act of God? Were they even aliens at all or maybe al Qaeda dressed up in costumes?

Peter doesn't give a crap about the politics, but he does give a crap about the looting, and the fires, and the unrecovered alien tech just lying around all over the damn place, just waiting to be picked up by criminals like those bank robbers, or worse, some overly curious little kid.

He spends almost every night there trying to help control the damage. There's military still crawling all over the place and they aren't generally too pleased when he shows up, but screw them. All they seem to do is wave their guns around and yell which doesn't help, like, at _all_.

Gwen, who has a surprising anti-establishment streak that Peter thinks is secretly adorable, rants loudly and often about this, especially with the new security protocols at Oscorp that have effectively banned her from Dr. Connors' former lab.

"Paperwork, Peter," she says. "They make me do _paperwork._ " She sounds absolutely disgusted.

It doesn't, of course, stop them from sneaking into the labs to examine the bits and pieces of alien tech that Peter recovers from Ground Zero, trying to poke and prod as much as they can before Peter surrenders it into the capable, if dubious, hands of Stark Industries.

"If we could figure out how these power sources work," Gwen says eagerly, "it would be huge. I mean, arc reactors are one thing but they're expensive and unless somebody discovers a new, unlimited source of vibranium somewhere, they're not realistic for the general public. But _this,_ " Gwen's eyes light up, holding up the remnants of what they think is some kind of alien engine. "All the compounds used in this device are common metals that can be found here on Earth. We just need to figure out how they've used them to synthesize so much energy."

"You could solve the energy crisis," Peter offers fondly. "Bet that'd get you a sweet scholarship."

Gwen rolls her eyes slightly. "Dude. I'm biochem _._ _You're_ the tech-head."

"Yes, but you're smarter than me."

"True, but I'm clumsier." Gwen waves her fingers in his face. "Can't build stuff."

Peter grins. "Okay, you design it and I'll build it with my nimble spider powers, how about that?"

"Sure. Right after I dream up the magical formula that makes this piece of crap turn on." Gwen makes a disgusted noise. "Oh my God, what if it _is_ magic?"

They both groan in unison.

Over the course of several weeks, Peter confiscates seventeen guns, three more bombs (one of which is still active), over thirty pieces of destroyed aircraft, something that Gwen thinks is body armor and Peter thinks is part of a ship's hull, and a few freaky-looking double-edged swords.

And one by one, Peter drops them off at SI. It's gotten to the point where they leave an empty lab table open for him beneath the most easily-accessible skylight, usually with a post-it note that says, _Thanks! ;)_

"Have you thought about SI at all?" Peter asks Gwen one day. "Their setup is insane, your head would explode."

"Oh, I bet." Gwen gets that dreamy, faraway look in her eye whenever someone mentions lab equipment or holographic projectors. "But no. I told you, I'm biochem."

"They do medical research," Peter points out.

"I like Oscorp," Gwen says. "What's your deal with them, anyway?"

Peter gives her a look, and she sobers.

"Oh. Well yeah, there's that."

"I hate that building," he says, sighing and pitching forward to lean his forehead against her temple, feeling a little calmer, so close to the warmth of her skin. "I hate that you go there all the time."

"If I'm not there then I lose access to Connors' research," she reminds him, scratching her fingernails against his scalp affectionately. "And the spiders. You still want to figure out why you are the way you are, don't you?"

"I guess," Peter replies, and he isn't lying. He does, in a vague way, but he wants Gwen to be safe more, and there's something about that company that unsettles him. It's the same sense that tingles every time somebody is about to aim or throw or shoot something at his head. He's learned to trust it.

"I think I'm getting closer," Gwen says. "Maybe. Yesterday I was able to get into the mainframe and recover some files Connors created about your dad's formula before Dr. Ratha showed up and started making suspicious faces at me."

"Yeah?" Peter asks, only half-interested. "What'd you find out?"

Gwen sighs, looping her arm around his neck. "The math's a little over my head. But I wiped it from Oscorp's server, just in case."

Peter smiles proudly. "What would I do without you," he says idly.

"Not much of anything, probably," Gwen says truthfully. "I could – I could go ask him."

Peter instantly tenses, not really being able to help it. Gwen pulls away slightly. "No – I'm sorry. You should, if you want to, I'm not going to tell you not to go."

"But you don't _want_ me to," Gwen says, a little flatly.

"He's your mentor," Peter says earnestly. "Your friend. I get it. He was mine too. And my dad's."

"But he also turned into a gigantic monster and tried to murder us," Gwen says. "Yeah, I get it too."

They both fall silent for a minute, more than a little morose.

"Well, I'll think about it?" Gwen says hesitantly. "Either way, you – I mean, there has to be something about _you_ specifically, why you survived and turned all, you know." She waves her hands at him in some kind of weird flapping motion. "Superhero-y, instead of monster-y."

"Are you saying I'm a special snowflake?" Peter deadpans.

"Yes. That is exactly what I'm saying," Gwen replies, and pinches him. "Also, shut up, you dweeb."

"Ow!" Peter yelps, laughing.

"Whatever, Spider-Man," Gwen says, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure that hurt a lot."

"I have _sensitive skin,_ " Peter says, tickling her neck viciously. Gwen squirms away, giggling.

"Oh it's _on_ ," she says breathlessly, and tackles him, the subject being officially shelved for the time being.

 

Peter acts on instinct most of the time these days, and does lots of spider-ish things because of it that freak him out if he thinks about it too closely. Like that time he wrapped up the uneaten half of his sandwich in webs to save for later because he was distracted by the science journal he was reading – um yeah, as far as he's concerned that never happened.

When he goes out swinging that's what he does, letting his body lead him to where he needs to go. Gwen calls it his spidey-sense, which has kind of a ring to it, Peter has to admit.

It's the spidey-sense that leads him to an abandoned parking garage on the Lower East Side one night. It's falling apart and marked for demolition, he notices absently, and the top two floors are missing.

He's already stopped a few muggings and robberies and stuff tonight. There's a situation brewing in Midtown that could easily turn into a riot, but the NYPD have a handle on it for now. He hears gunfire from inside the garage and goes in cautiously, but there's nobody there but three people in expensive suits, and wow, he really doesn't have time for this.

"Spider-Man," the woman says, clicking something on her belt. The fake gunfire stops abruptly.

"Spooks," Peter greets, swinging to a solid-looking beam and casually letting himself hang upside down. "Fake gunshots? Really? Supremely uncool."

One of the men shifts uncomfortably, but the woman – obviously in charge – doesn't flinch. "Yes, I apologize, it's childish," she says. "But we didn't have any other way to get ahold of you."

"There's this thing called Facebook now," Peter points out helpfully. "Did you know I have my own fan page? I have my own fan page."

The woman raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "My name is Agent Maria Hill," she says, "I'm with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Better known as S.H.I.E.L.D."

"How long have you guys been here?" Peter asks incredulously. "Have you seriously been sitting here all night with the fake gun music waiting for me to show up?"

"No. We've been tracking your position by satellite," Hill says, and something in Peter goes very still.

"Uh, well," Peter says, "that's incredibly creepy."

"Quite," Hill replies. "We hold no ill will towards you or what you've been doing. We understand your priorities are with the people of New York and thus are aligned with ours – rest assured, you have nothing to fear from us."

"You'll excuse me if I don't take that at face value, Agent," Peter drawls. "I don't know, I kind of have a problem with authority. It's a thing."

"You would not be the only superhero in the world with that quality," Hill says dryly.

"You guys think I'm a superhero?" Peter asks. "Aw. Flattered."

"Don't be," Hill says succinctly. "We understand that you've been recovering Chitauri technology and surrendering it to Stark Industries."

"You understand right," Peter replies. "So?"

"So we would like to extend to you an invitation to work toward the same goal," Hill replies. She turns and nods at one of her flunkies, who steps forward and tosses a manila envelope on the ground, below where Peter is hanging. "Inside that envelope is a list of all the known individuals in the city who are currently in possession of some piece of Chitauri technology leftover from the battle. As you can see, it is quite large."

Peter ignores it. "And? You want me to go around knocking on doors?"

"You've proven yourself to be much quicker at recovering this technology than we are," Hill says, looking as if it physically pains her to admit. "On our own, it will take our agents much longer to recover all of it than we'd like. This technology is dangerous, Spider-Man; I don't think I have to tell you what could be done with it if it falls into the wrong hands."

Peter doesn't say anything for a moment, a little torn. He grabs the envelope with a web and peeks inside – sure enough, there's a list of names and addresses. There's also several pages of specs that make Peter almost physically drool.

"What's the catch?" he asks. "There's always a catch, right?"

"You surrender the technology to us, not to Stark Industries," Hill says immediately.

Ah, there it is. "I thought Tony Stark was one of the good guys," Peter remarks blithely.

"He is. But Tony Stark is not his company," Hill says evenly. "It's a public corporation under civilian control. Their security is not perfect, as evidenced by your ease of entry." Hill's expression sharpens and turns into something very dangerous-looking. "I can assure you, had you attempted to do the same at a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, you would be in custody right now."

"Think kinda highly of yourselves, don't you," Peter says, just to see her reaction. He isn't disappointed – her face tightens even more, mouth going pointed and angry. "How 'bout this: I'll think about it. Yeah?"

"See that you do," Hill says, clipped and efficient, "and take this." She pulls something small from her jacket pocket and tosses it up in the air. Peter catches it easily. "It's my contact information. You can reach me at any of those numbers, at any time. I will arrange a meeting with you personally, or send someone to pick up anything that you've recovered, day or night."

Peter considers the – well, business card is what it is, but it's made out of some kind of metal and all that's on it are three phone numbers, one of which is not an American one, if he isn't mistaken. _Okay, so that's kind of badass,_ he admits, to himself.

"So you don't call me, I call you?" he asks. "I like it. I don't suppose you know my real name, or anything, huh?"

"Of course not," Hill says, and Peter isn't sure whether he can actually feel relieved or not. "We're not out to ruin your life. Like I said, you have nothing to fear from us. In fact, if you're interested, we'd be more than willing to call on you for your assistance, should we need it."

"Uh," Peter stutters, wondering if he's just been offered a job or if he misinterpreted that somehow. "Yeah. We'll stick with the 'don't call me, I call you' thing for now."

"As you wish." Without any sign from Hill, the two male agents turn and walk away towards the north entrance of the garage, as slickly as a choreographed dance routine. "Good luck, Spider-Man. I hope to hear from you soon." She starts to turn, then pauses, looking up at him through narrowed eyes.

"Agent Hill," Peter says as smoothly as he can. After a night like this, he feels more like a child than he ever has before in his life. "Got something else to say?"

"I suppose." Hill pauses. "It's a different kind of world now, you know that as well as I do, yes?" She continues without waiting for an answer. "There's no need for us to be at odds. There are more fights coming, and we could use all the help we can get." Something that looks a little rueful flashes across her expression, faster than a flash of passing headlights. "Just something else to think about."

Peter doesn't answer her, and she nods once and walks out with quick, efficient steps.

"Well, damn," Peter says, to the empty garage. "Wasn't expecting that."

 

 

He drops the intel off at Gwen's ("Whoa, like – like _the_ S.H.I.E.L.D.? Peter, holy shit, oh my God – are those _schematics?!_ ") and stops three more robberies and helps get seven people out of a house fire in Brooklyn before going home. His breath is in his throat the whole time.

Aunt May is up when he gets there, puttering around the kitchen like she used to do when Uncle Ben was alive. Only back then, he'd be awake too, sitting at the table trying to fix something or reading one of his huge philosophy books that nobody else would even touch. Peter could always hear their muffled voices in his room, at his computer or doing homework or lying in bed.

All of Uncle Ben's books are in storage, now.

"I know you're there," Aunt May says, without turning around. She's scrubbing the sink with a bedraggled-looking sponge, her greying hair falling in messy curls around her face. "Where've you been?"

"Gwen's," Peter says with a twinge. It isn't _technically_ a lie.

"Oh. Well, are you hungry?" She tosses the sponge aside, turning around and drying her hands on a hand towel. Her smile is stretched thinly across her face, a hard thing to look at. "I didn't make anything fancy because I wasn't sure when you'd be home but I think we have some pork chops? Or did I cook those already?" She trails off, muttering to herself and rooting around in the fridge, brow furrowed.

Here's the thing Peter knows: if Uncle Ben hadn't died, he would never have been able to get away with not telling them about Spider-Man for much longer. He was always the pushy one, the one who asked a million questions at school conferences and barged into Peter's room to see what he was working on and tugged Peter along on one of his man-about-town trips around the city, to the Met or the library or a tour at Ellis Island. Aunt May was content with what pieces Peter gave her willingly, always there when he wanted her to be but then and _only_ then – it was Uncle Ben who elbowed his way in whether Peter wanted him to or not.

And here she is even now, her shoulders tight with tension and the kitchen practically radiating bleach, pretending for _Peter's_ sake. He feels a renewed spike of guilt for letting it go this far, even, because she's all he has, because wanting to protect her is no excuse for not trusting her, really, because Gwen and Captain Stacy and a bunch of random New Yorkers and probably Maria Hill and a dozen other assorted S.H.I.E.L.D. agents all knew before _she_ did, Aunt May, _Aunt May_. God.

"…how do you feel about salad? Well, I know how you _feel_ about salad, but it's that or cereal and I know – "

"I'm Spider-Man," he says, and she drops something inside the fridge with a clatter.

"Peter," she says on a gasp, turning around and bringing one hand to her mouth. "Oh, Peter, _Peter._ "

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," he says desperately, feeling a little floaty, like he's not totally there, in the situation. He can't really feel his face.

"Oh honey, I know," she says, and takes a staggering step forward. Peter's there in her arms before he even has time to blink. "I know, I knew. I know."

She doesn't say anything else, because she's always known what he wanted, because – well, maybe just because.

 

 

He shows her his closet of spare costumes, his locked, encrypted files with his dad's research and the specs for the web shooters, the math recovered from the Oscorp mainframe that he and Gwen can't puzzle out, the metallic business card from Maria Hill. She gets a pinched look on her face and takes his hand, leads him into her bedroom and makes him stand next to her closet.

"Your father gave us this the night he and your mother left," she says, pushing her hangers aside and twirling the combination dial of the safe that Uncle Ben used to keep his old stock certificates in. "He said that it was more important than anything else, that we shouldn't even tell anyone that we have it."

Peter watches her open the safe, pulling out a small envelope, weathered with age. His hands are shaking, he notices distantly.

"It's a sample of your blood," she says, tapping out a small vial into her palm. She holds it up and looks at it sadly, closing her fingers around it carefully. "They drew it right after you were born. I thought – oh I don't know. Your father was a scientist, he was so – so eccentric. Like Ben, like. Like you." She makes a fist around the vial, letting it drop to her side. "You know when I first met Ben, he and Richard weren't talking? They'd had some fight about something silly, an 'intellectual argument,' Ben called it. They were both just so _stubborn_."

Peter smiles faintly. "Philosophy," he says. "Uncle Ben said Dad hated it."

Aunt May gives a watery laugh. "Oh Lord, yes he did. And whenever they talked they'd end up arguing about it. I couldn't even understand what they were talking about half the time."

Peter steps forward and takes her wrist carefully, biting his lip.

"He said you were special," Aunt May whispers, leaning forward and pressing the fist holding the vial against Peter's shoulder. "He said you were 'a miracle,' that's how he put it. I thought he was just – well – but now _you_ – and he never – "

Peter lets his eyes fall closed, the sound of wind rushing in his ears. He remembers all at once the night Uncle Ben died, what his blood felt like on Peter's hands, what his voice sounded like, the sharp tang of his cologne. He remembers what George Stacy's blood felt like too, and Curt Connors'. The little girl he saved from the fire, who cut her leg on a piece of wood. The mugger whose nose he'd broken. Six thousand people dead, and more fights coming.

_Don't ask a question that you don't want to know the answer to,_ Uncle Ben used to say. Something else Peter failed to understand until way too late.


	3. Chapter 3

He meets Gwen at Liz Allan's hospital room in New Jersey the next day, with a handful of daisies in a blue vase that he picked up on the way. Gwen's talking to Liz's parents quietly by the window when he arrives, so he puts them by her bedside as unobtrusively as he can, avoiding looking at the pale, watered-down looking girl in the bed. 

Gwen breaks away when she sees him, giving Mrs. Allan a quick hug and coming over to take his hand. "Thanks for coming," she says, hushed, "but we should probably go."

Peter nods and follows her out, seeing Mrs. Allan cover her face and turn into her husband's chest, out of the corner of his eye. 

"How is she?" he asks, reaching out for Gwen's hand. She slides it into his so easily, like a puzzle piece clicking together. 

"Not good," Gwen says, expression dark. "She's been asleep too long."

 _Now there's a sentence,_ Peter thinks. 

"I need your help with something," he says. Gwen nods silently. 

They find an empty lab fairly easily, and a few webs ensure that nobody will be getting in or seeing their faces on camera any time soon. Gwen is efficient and careful with the blood, drawing a minute drop out and sliding it under a microscope. 

"It looks…like blood, Peter," she says. "There's nothing unusual about it that I can tell, just from this."

She steps aside to let him look, and well, yeah. It looks like blood. 

"It makes sense though," Gwen says. "Even if you're – well, if there's something there _,_ it's probably at the molecular level. You wouldn't be able to tell just by looking."

"There has to be a reason he saved it," Peter says. "Why he insisted Aunt May and Uncle Ben keep it safe and not tell anyone they had it."

"There are other tests we can do," Gwen says slowly. "But not here. I need equipment, I need – " she frowns, tapping one nail against her chin. 

"Oscorp?" Peter suggests.

Gwen shakes her head. "They've tripled security in the last two weeks," she says with a grimace. "Something big's happening, I don't know. They let most of the support staff go – the only reason I'm still around is because they need me to finish cleaning out Connors' files."

"Connors might know," Peter says. "If anyone would, it'd be him."

"You want to ask him about this while what, visiting him in a _prison_?" Gwen asks incredulously. "I know I'm a tad over-paranoid about things like this but that just seems stupid." 

Peter feels like strangling something. Himself, maybe. "So you're saying that without advanced lab equipment, we're not going to figure out what the hell is up with my blood."

Gwen looks just frustrated as he feels. "We can't sneak in, either. I mean we could _get_ in, sure, but there's no way we'd have enough time to do the tests. And the type of equipment we need…" she trails off apologetically. "I don't see any way to get this done on our own, Pete. I'm sorry."

Peter sighs and Gwen moves to his side, leaning her forehead against his arm. 

"I can't believe you told Aunt May," she says. "I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks," he says, with a small laugh. "I don't know if she was angry or terrified or what. But she seems okay. The same as before, really."

"She knew all along, probably," Gwen says, a hint of pride in her voice. Like she's happy to know somebody like Aunt May, like she's happy that Peter's family is amazing, even if they're complicated and stubborn and tragic, too. "I mean, it's not like you're all that stealth."

"I am too stealth," Peter protests weakly. "I'm stealth all over the place, you've got no idea."

"Really? A secret identity for what, like a _month_ , before you used it as a pickup line?"

Peter elbows her and she laughs. 

"No, no, it was very romantic, don't worry. But still, I'm just saying."

"I wasn't trying to give you a line," Peter says, which she already knows, but it's the principle of the thing. 

"Nah," Gwen says, grinning up at him like she knows all his secrets. Which she does. "You already had me, anyway."

 

 

Gwen eats dinner at his house that night. She's been a regular fixture for months but this is the first time since – well, _since,_ and neither she nor Aunt May are shy in talking about what has always been an elephant in the room before. 

They embarrass him and make him tell them details and ask him invasive questions and make spider jokes and stay up well into the night, talking and laughing and generally trying as hard as possible to act like they're not all scared to death, all three of them. 

_This is my life,_ is what he thinks, Gwen's arm wrapped around his and Aunt May examining one of his web shooters through her ancient bifocals. _This is what I do, now._

It's not too bad, he figures.

 

 

Gwen makes the decision to graduate early, based partly on how her father is no longer around to encourage her to do things the normal way ("Normal," Gwen scoffs, "sometimes I thought that was his favorite word.") and partly because Midtown Science's greatest asset – its campus – was mostly destroyed in the Invasion. It will take them about a year to rebuild, and Gwen isn't willing to wait. 

"You could too," Gwen says. "You've got the grades and Ms. Charles would help you meet the requirements." She smiles. "We'd still be in the same year, then."

Peter just shakes his head, not wanting to explain how he's not sure how he's going to pay for college, exactly, let alone a private school like Empire State. All he and Aunt May have is Uncle Ben's pension and what little Aunt May is able to make off her investments and her meager salary. She can't go back to working full-time, not with her arthritis, and being Spider-Man doesn't exactly pay much. There's a trust fund in his name that his parents set up for him but he won't be able to access it until he's twenty-one, and he doesn't even think there's that much in there, anyway. 

"I don't know that I could balance college on top of everything else," he tells her. "Maybe next year."

Gwen doesn't exactly look satisfied with his answer, but she lets it go. Peter is more than a little relieved; as brilliant as she is, she still comes from a wealthy family, and sometimes, she just doesn't _understand_.

"It would take me a little bit," she says, "but I could get access to their labs, after I establish myself in the department. I could do some more work on your blood sample, then."

"I think I have a better idea about that, actually," Peter says. "You have that list from S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

Gwen frowns at him, moving to her desk and pulling the list out of the fake bottom of her pencil drawer. Peter has to laugh; she reminds him of his dad, sometimes, with her paranoia and her authority issues.

"You're going to trade labor for lab time?" Gwen asks, handing over the list. "How is that going to work, exactly? You said yourself you don't trust them."

"I don't, really. I guess. I'm not sure," Peter says, scanning the list. Most of them are Manhattan addresses, not surprising, but there's a fair amount in Jersey and Connecticut. There's a group down at the bottom that Gwen's highlighted in bright orange - names connected to well-known crime families in New York. Yeah, he's probably gonna save those for last.

Gwen curls up next to him on the foot of her bed, wedging her toes underneath his thigh and chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. "We don't know what their motives are," she says finally. "I couldn't dig up hardly anything on the organization itself. It's government-sanctioned, but all the official sources just say they're a 'logistical arm of the United Nations,' whatever the hell that means." She leans her chin on her knees, expression drawn and worried. "We can't assume that they don't have an ulterior motive for approaching you – or that they don't either know who you are or have the means to figure out who you are, no matter what that woman told you."

"She was _tracking_ me," Peter points out, still chilled by the implications. "They definitely have the means to figure it out."

Gwen visibly shivers.

Peter sighs. "Either way, though – I've got to get this stuff off the streets," he says, waving the list. "She knew I wouldn't be able to just leave it alone. And she obviously wants it gone too, otherwise she wouldn't have given me the list without some sort of guarantee that I wouldn't just keep handing it over to Stark Industries."

"So she wants the tech," Gwen says slowly, "and she'd _prefer_ it if you gave it to S.H.I.E.L.D., but it's not a main priority. More than anything else, she just wants it out of civilian hands."

"And Tony Stark _is_ an Avenger," Peter says. "So it's not like I'm handing it over to supervillains. Maybe she just doesn't like him?"

"Or she doesn't trust him," Gwen points out. "The Avengers are – maybe they're not getting orders from anywhere. Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't want them getting involved."

"Yeah, you know what," Peter says suddenly, "I don't care. I don't care about spies and their problems, what I care about is New York, and you and Aunt May, and figuring out who – or _what_ I am." He folds the list up and tucks it into the neck of his costume, beneath his t-shirt, for safekeeping. "I'll round up as much of this stuff as I can and figure out what to do with it later."

"There is another option, you know," Gwen says cautiously, watching him through worried eyes. "You could do what you were planning to do – but through SI, instead of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Peter pauses. "Trade it for what, lab space? An assistant to run tests? I'm not going to show up as Spider-Man with you in tow, it's too risky – but I can't just hand over the sample, either."

"No." Gwen reaches out and squeezes his forearm. "Hold on." She rises and goes to her computer, wiggling the mouse until the monitor comes to life, clacking out something quickly on the keyboard. "Here. Come look."

"Henry Pym," Peter reads, bending over Gwen's shoulder. "Summa cum laude Stanford University, Ph.D Harvard, masters in quantum physics, cybernetics…" Peter trails off, whistling at the rambling list. "Wow, this guy makes Connors look like a - a high school teacher."

"He's a genius," Gwen says, eyes sparkling. "He just published a paper on something he's calling 'Pym particles' – remember I was talking about it the other day with you and my mom at dinner? – it's a subatomic particle that he identified during his work at CERN that he thinks can be manipulated in order to change an object's mass." 

Peter blinks at her. "That's – "

"I _know_ , right," Gwen says. "He's also doing a lot of cool stuff with robotics that's really – well, his theories are a little crazy but considering the kind of stuff that we _know_ is possible, I don't think we can actually discount any of it any more than – "

"Gwen," Peter cuts in, amused.

"Right, right. Okay well, I know, random scientist, what's the point – here." She clicks around for a second, pulling up a press release dated from a few months before. "He's here in New York, working with Stark Industries. He was one of the first big names they got before the Invasion – remember I told you they were trying to build up their research cred? – and one of the only ones to stay on afterwards. Other than Bruce Banner, but he mainly does stuff with gamma radiation."

"You think he can help us?" Peter asks, leaning in closer to look at the photograph attached to the release. Pepper Potts is standing at a podium, speaking into a microphone, and next to her is a tall, blond man in a rumpled suit, looking intensely into the camera. 

"I think if anyone has the resources and the _brains_ to figure out what is going on with that blood sample, it's him," Gwen says. "I mean, let's be honest – I know I'm smart, but I'm not _this_ kind of smart. Maybe someday, but…" she shrugs. "Even if you did get me a lab to work with, I doubt that I could figure out exactly what it is that you want to figure out. Not without a couple Ph.Ds under my belt first, anyway."

"What," Peter says skeptically, "is a physicist going to do with a blood sample?"

"His first Ph.D is in biochemistry," Gwen says triumphantly. Peter makes a face at her and she grins. "Yup."

"Okay," Peter says slowly, trying to puzzle it all out in his head. "So he'll help me why, exactly, out of the goodness of his heart?"

"No," Gwen says impatiently, "he'll help you because of _science._ Think about it Peter – there is nobody else like you, in the entire _world._ " She grins. "If there really is something different about your DNA, something that made it possible for you to become Spider-Man, that blood sample is something that any scientist would kill to get a look at." 

"Oh, that makes me feel better," Peter snaps. 

"Don't give him the whole sample, then," Gwen says, rolling her eyes. "Not even half. He doesn't need all that much to do testing, anyway. That way he won't be able to auction it off or anything – which I doubt someone like him would do – and if you go in costume, he won't be able to connect the dots between Spider-Man and Peter Parker."

"Well, it's the best idea we've got," Peter says with a shrug. "Let's hope he's not going to turn into a giant monster any time soon."

"I'm sure that was like, a one-time thing," Gwen assures him. "…right?"

 

 

Finding Henry Pym is a bit harder than dropping random bits of tech down a skylight, Peter quickly discovers. Stark Tower still has a lot of heavy damage and isn't open for public tours yet, so there's no luck sneaking in that way – and it's not exactly the type of company that announces the locations of everyone's offices on the website. 

Peter settles for a good old fashioned stakeout, which isn't ideal but is the best he can do at this point. Aunt May, with her trademark aplomb, packs him a snack.

"I tried to come up with something that would be easy to eat when you're…" she shrugs helplessly. "Doing your 'thing?' Whatever you call it."

"Swinging, Aunt May," Peter says, unsure if he is amused or embarrassed or what. 

"Right. That. So there's crackers and bottled water and those gummy things you like. And call if you're going to be late! Okay? I'm making homemade chicken noodle soup tonight."

"Right," Peter says, kissing her cheek and wondering how soon he's going to regret the whole honesty thing. Maybe he should've waited until he moved out to tell her.

It's relatively easy to wait around outside Stark Tower until Pym leaves for the day, but the problem is getting him _alone –_ the guy is constantly surrounded by lab assistants, suits, other scientists, even Tony Stark himself on one memorable occasion. Peter ends up hanging around for almost two weeks before he gets a chance to catch him, and even then it's not ideal – broad daylight and the middle of the day. This cloak and dagger stuff is way harder than it looks.

"You're kind of a popular guy, huh?" is Peter's opening line, which is a lot better than the _hey asshole, would you sit still for two seconds?_ that was his first impulse. "Not that I don't understand, I mean – brains _and_ beauty? It's like you were ordered from a catalog."

If Pym is at all surprised at the sudden appearance of Spider-Man in his private massage room, he doesn't show it. All he does, in fact, is pause in unzipping his pants, which Peter appreciates.

"Oh, uh," he says, "thank you?"

"You're welcome," Peter says graciously. It's so nice when people actually take compliments instead of freaking out and trying to shoot him. "So a massage, really? Is that a scientist thing or a Harvard thing?" 

"It's a present from my girlfriend thing," Pym says, rolling his eyes. "Actually pretty relaxing though, you should try it." 

"I don't like people touching me," Peter says truthfully. "Spider thing."

Pym nods sagely. "Well if you're not here to budge in on my hour, why are you here? I don't _think_ I've done anything illegal lately."

"Good job," Peter says approvingly. "But I'm here to ask a favor."

"A favor for Spider-Man," Pym says thoughtfully, a somewhat calculating look falling over his features that makes Peter pause. "What could a superhero possibly want from me?"

Peter drops down from the ceiling onto the massage table to buy himself a few seconds, a sudden wariness falling over him like a wet blanket. Suddenly handing over a sample of his DNA to a stranger seems like a somewhat impulsive plan. "How are you with bloodwork?" 

"Fair," Pym says immediately. "Not my specialty. You got leukemia or something?"

"No," Peter says dryly. "But I've got a sample that I need analyzed, if you're up for it."

"What kind of sample?" Pym asks, shifting his weight slightly in Peter's direction. 

His body language is still open, non-threatening, but Peter's still not crazy about that look on his face, so a change in approach seems in order. 

"You remember the thing at Oscorp, about five months ago?" Peter asks. "Curt Connors?"

"You mean the guy who turned into a giant lizard and tried to poison the entire city?" Pym asks. "Nope, doesn't ring a bell."

"I love a guy with a sense of humor," Peter says, rolling his eyes behind his mask. Pulling out the almost miniscule drop of blood from his father's sample, he holds it up to the light enticingly. "I love guys who live up to their press even more."

"Is that - " Pym visibly swallows. "Connors?"

Peter nods. "I need to know everything I can about what he did to himself," he says, trying to keep his voice steady and even, cut out any tells that he might be lying, "it's funny how one guy turns himself into a monster and suddenly you're kind of paranoid about it."

Pym narrows his eyes at the sample. "It's not very much," he says skeptically. "There's not a whole lot I can do without more blood to work with."

"Yeah well, it's not like the guy was lining up to get his blood drawn," Peter says. "I was kinda trying not to die at the time."

Pym takes a step forward and Peter tenses on instinct, prompting Pym to hold up his hands in apology. Peter forces himself to relax slightly. "Why me?" he asks.

"You're capable," Peter says evenly, "and you work for an Avenger. It's about the best I can do, at this point."

"Work _with_ an Avenger," Pym says, face twisting in distaste. "And who named them that, anyway? Kind of overdramatic, don't you think?"

"Yeah, the alien invasion that devastated the city was pretty unimpressive," Peter scolds. Pym makes another face, lowering his hands somewhat sheepishly. "You in or what?"

"Why should I?" Pym asks, solidly confirming Peter's instinct to withhold his trust. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm as disapproving of mutant lizards as the next guy, but this is an expensive, time-consuming favor, you know. I'll be using Stark lab time and equipment to help you figure out...what, exactly? I'm assuming you _did_ confiscate all of Connors' research when you stopped him...didn't you?"

 _Jackass,_ Peter thinks vehemently. "Locking up his research isn't going to stop it from happening again," Peter says, fighting again to keep his tone even. "He worked at Oscorp for a very long time, Dr. Pym, and there are plenty of people who would pay to get their hands on that knowledge _._ " 

Pym raises an eyebrow, not looking very convinced. "I assume that any data I would obtain from this sample would be confidential?" he asks. "As well as my involvement?"

"Worried about job security?" Peter quips, "Stark Industries seems like it'd frown on moonlighting."

Pym huffs impatiently. "As engaging as this verbal foreplay is, I do have a meeting at two-thir - "

"Fine, whatever," Peter says. "You don't blab, and neither will I. We'll have a mutually assured destruction thing."

Pym nods, the tension in his shoulders releasing slightly. "What exactly do you want me to do?" he asks, crossing his arms. "I can do a bunch of basic tests, but - "

"If I wanted the basics, I would've sent it to a commercial lab," Peter interrupts. "Look as deep as you can with what you've got. I don't care what you do, I don't need the sample back - I just need to know everything that you can possibly get out of it."

Stepping forward carefully, Pym takes the sample from Peter's outstretched hand, eyes locked on Peter's masked face. Peter's never been more grateful that his expression is hidden. 

"Everything I can get," Pym says slowly, stepping back and peering at the sample. "Got it."

"I'll be in touch," Peter says, turning to jump back to the windowsill.

"Very well," Pym calls after him, still examining the sample closely. Turning back for one last look before he swings out the window, Peter feels a chill of dread at what he's just handed over, followed closely by a sweep of muted panic.

Halfway back to Queens, Peter has to stop on the roof of a skyscraper to rip his mask off and catch his breath, leaning down to brace himself against his knees, regretting what he just did so fiercely it actually physically hurts.

"I am such an _idiot,_ " he tells a group of pigeons, picking at crumbs a few yards away on the rooftop. Their blank stares, to Peter's eyes, seem to agree.


End file.
